


Utopia 147

by chekcough



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Dystopian society, F/M, Post-Colonization (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-05 23:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16376675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chekcough/pseuds/chekcough
Summary: "Utopias were constructed over the ruins of Colonization. Names of countries and cities erased forever, stamped down to cinders. It was thought to be easier this way." Post-Col, Mulder and Scully's daughter learns of their Past.





	1. Prologue

New nations are rarely built in peace. The painful blaze of war leaves ashes in its wake, and it is left to the winning side to sketch their new boundaries, to reset the chess board. Names of countries and cities erased forever, stamped down to cinders. It was thought to be easier this way. Easier for people to pick up their lives and begin again in a shiny new world. The Creators constructed Utopia from the ruins of their own making and welcomed Earth's survivors. Here is your perfect world, they said, use it well. They even named it using a word coined by man.

Utopia was created in Year Zero by those who thought they had saved the Future, saved man from itself. But predicting the future is a dangerous game, and not for unpracticed minds. Safety in Utopia came with a price. There were rules to follow, rules set to preserve perfection and prevent evil, and consequences for breaking them. In the end, her new citizens were grateful for order after chaos, and most took the rules in stride. The Creators were right -it was easier this way.

Midnight, New Year's Eve, I gathered with two May girls -Iris and Julia. Girls and boys born in May were given I or J names, it made things less complicated. We came together to celebrate in the city that bore an ill-fitting name -Utopia.  _Utopia 147_. Tonight they had turned it into St. Petersburg, a city in a country called Russia that no longer existed. Projected the city onto the plastic walls with snow falling down against the images of its oddly shaped buildings. Everyone lived in a Utopia. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them. I'd requested information at the library on U-28th after the announcement had been posted at school:

_Year Sixteen's featured city will be: St. Petersburg!_

_Featured activities: ice skating (skates available for 600u), snowball fights (gloves/mittens required, available for 400u)_

_Sleigh-taxis will be in service from 19:00-23:30_

Most citizens wouldn't be able to afford the two activities, and 600u was hardly an investment, considering the fact that those ice skates would only be available for twenty four hours. There was snow most years, but the novelty had worn off quickly. Most children thought cold was the water we drank. They never knew it could freeze. I'd be among the children and adults who came to the park to watch the rich have fun. 600u was expensive, but perhaps my father would let us try. After all, I'd never skated, not really.

The computer tablet had been withholding when I had put in my information request on St. Petersburg. It gave me a short description of the city and some digitized images. It had been a dangerous city in the Past, torn apart by revolution. Utopia had solved these problems, we were better off without St. Petersburg. I went home and set myself to studying for the January Assessments. I'd been second in my year this past November, and never below fifth in all my years of schooling. The points I lost in Assessments usually corresponded to a word that no longer existed. Ones I'd discovered by accident in one of my dreams. I knew which ones to use and which ones to keep secret, but sometimes I slipped. My parents explained the foreign ones to me. I was their September girl -Sylvia.

My city went all out for New Years.

St. Petersburg, a silver sound. How oddly the real one struck our ears -Utopia 147. A sound like bronze. Like horseshoes on stone, hammer on anvil, thunder in the name. Not Petersburg of the bells and water, that city of mirrors, of transparent twilights, Tchaikovsky ballets I'd watched behind closed eyelids. Its name had twice been changed by war -Petersburg was thought too human, bearing the name of a man.

Utopia 147. The sound is bronze, and this is a story of bronze.

That night, the cusp of Sixteen's New Year, we prepared to conjure the Future in Julia's dark bedroom on U-56th. From down the hall, the sounds of her parents' large New Years soirée filtered under the door -women's laughter, scraps of pleasant music, the scent of pine, manufactured for artificial satisfaction. Nothing was authentic in Utopia, but it was as close to real as the Creators could manage. In the Past, music was played on instruments that people held in their hands.  _Music is the language of the soul_ , I'd heard the words in a dream. I typed it into a personal document on my desk tablet the next morning and received two demerits for Unauthorized Writing. Through dreams I learned that music could be ugly, angry, frightening. It could be soothing, and make your heart ache with its beauty. But no more. It was thought to be too expressive. Too much could be conveyed. And so the Creators had left it out when Utopia was designed. Now we had discs with approved music created on a computer. In the Past people set words to melody. That wasn't allowed anymore, either. I remember being very small, being bathed by my mother, and she was singing, I know that now. I know because I looked in her demerit book (adults had them, too), and found the date and description of the offense "singing". They'd given four demerits. I snuck a look at other crimes. Sprinkled among the petty ones were High Offenses. My mother, a secret rebel. I'd have never guessed.

_Year 4: unauthorized pregnancy (600d)_

_refusal to terminate unauthorized pregnancy (300d)_

_attempt to accompany relocated unauthorized offspring (100d)_

_Year 5: willful endangerment of self (1000d)_

_unauthorized writing (20d)_

_Year 6: unauthorized writing (30d)_

_Year 7: willful endangerment of self and others (4000d)_

_Year 8: unauthorized writing (1200d)_

_Year 12: invoking name of deity (4d)_

I made myself look away that day. I was alone in the house and I was frightened.

Tonight below in the street, harness bells announced temporary holiday sleighs busying themselves transporting guests to parties all along the snow-filled streets. Only a few transport pods could be seen darting through the slow traffic like beetles seeking shelter. But in the warm room we giggled breathlessly, having escaped the New Years festivities, eager to trick the Future. We were brand new women with big ideas, some of them silly. We wore gowns and felt older than we were. Older and exotic, filled with mystery. Gone were the days of playing in our mothers' closets. Julia in her black gown, Iris in a homemade dress of light blue velvet, and myself in russet silk with an olive overlay. What in the Past had been an expensive luxury was now commonplace. I had complained about the silk earlier, it had been cold in the snow, even with my coat.

I was a month shy of sixteen, the same age as the Year, a month away from becoming a Protector of Utopia, the first generation of Protectors. I longed to discover the secrets kept from us in our youth. What I'd spent all my life training for. All the Assessments, all the required Completions. We waited for midnight to cast our wishes, bouncing on eager toes, heads converged together. Julia's dark cropped locks, the dusty blue-black of a crow; Iris', ash blonde, braided and twisted like a crown around her head in that style she refused to abandon; and I, with hair the red of young foxes crossing a field of snow, woven like bread on top of my head by my mother's dexterous fingers earlier that evening. I'd stolen her perfume and copied the way she applied it, on her wrists, behind her ears, across her collar bones. It didn't smell the same on me.

It seems like a scene in a glass globe to me now. I want to turn it over and set the snow to swirling. I want to shout to my young self  _Stop_! Don't be in such a hurry to peel back the petals of the Future. It will be here soon enough, and it won't be quite the bloom you expect. Just stay there, in that precious moment, at the hinge of time…but I was in love with the Future, captivated by the idea of Fate. There's nothing more bewitching to the young -until its dogs sink their teeth into your calf and pull you to the ground.

What did I hope to receive that night? It seems romantic now, this young girl who wanted to change the world. The errors my teenage self found with Utopia 147. I see her there, staring impatiently at the clock on the wall, a girl both brash and shy, awkward and feigning sophistication in hopes of being thought mysterious. I want her to stay in that moment before my world changed, when I longed for youthful things, when the Future assembled like brilliant horses loading into the starting gate. I remember the next instant, the shimmer of an answer to a question I'd spent years asking myself in the dark.

I wished for the Past. The truth of it.

I saw her in my mind -the woman from my dreams, the warmth of a man's voice, a broken song, the wrinkle of a long journey filled with unimaginable strife. The memories were inside me, fighting to stay hidden, and I couldn't scrape them out. My calm and quiet mother, my strong father, the parts of themselves they had buried away were out there somewhere.

My younger self looks up. She senses me there in the room, a vague but troubling presence. I swear she catches a glimpse of me in the window's reflection, with silvery St. Petersburg swirling outside. The woman from the Future -neither young nor old, bathed in grief and compromise, wearing her own two eyes. A shudder passes through her like a draft.

I left the New Year's party on U-56th as St. Petersburg faded from the domed city walls, replaced with the deep night sky, street lamps to light my way. The sleighs were already gone -a pod zipped to the edge of the sidewalk and beeped patiently, offering me a ride, but I politely refused. Workers wearing the same face set to work, deprogramming the snow along the streets so that it disappeared mid-fall and faded away altogether. Until next year, I told myself. I watched a Worker cross into the park to deprogram the ice skating rink. As an unexpected but delightful surprise, my father had taken us skating. My mother seemed slightly embarrassed at the enormous dent he had made in our credit book just for an hour of what looked like fun. It was mostly adults who took to the ice, ones who knew how to skate. Their little children with lower centers of gravity scraped along easily enough, but I struggled to remain standing, even with my father urging me on. He amazed us, skating backwards and moving across the ice like a smooth line of ink on paper. My mother took a few minutes to find her stride, and was soon skating gracefully with him, a smile on her face, her nose pink with cold. And I, their ungraceful daughter, stood on the sidelines watching them until, after a time, they seemed to remember me. My father took my right hand, my mother the left, and they pulled me along with them. After several falls my mother took me out of the rink and we handed in our skates. But we stayed nearby and watched my father take several last laps around the oval of ice. An expression on his face I couldn't quite read.

As the temperature of the city regulated I took off the coat I'd bought last year specifically for New Years. I looked to the left at the rows of identical houses, slim and tall, a door and four windows. To the right the quiet of a nighttime street with very few pods zipping by. I'd find five demerits in my book at home for staying out past curfew, but usually on New Years the Creators were lenient. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that a grand change had occurred, that this year was really special, the early hours of Year Sixteen felt like any other night. Only the flash of truth from earlier lingered in my mind. A puzzling vision, as it seemed to grow clearer with each passing moment instead of fading into dim memory. The blurry woman from my dreams had become who I'd always suspected her to be -my mother, her hair chin length, her eyes held fear, perhaps because I'd finally found her. My father's voice pronounced that strange and foreign word - _Scully_. The song, lilting and uncertain. There was more to this glimpse of the past. There was a story. If this story is bronze, perhaps theirs was forged of another metal.

At fifteen I was filled with the allure of possibility, of the incredible, but I knew that for some the brightness was harder to see. On sleepless nights I would curl on the window seat in my bedroom and look outside at the comforting uniformity of my world, the easy perfection, and listen to my mother cry. When I was a child I shut my eyes against it -not understanding her pain, her sorrow. The warmth of my father's muffled voice, a soothing balm, reassured me.

When I was older, however, I allowed myself to give in to curiosity. What, after all these years, could trouble her so? I got out of bed one April night and crept down the hallway to their bedroom, and saw the answer to my question, heard it in whispers. The mirror across from their bed showed my parents, half covered by the sheet; my mother draped across my father, and he ran gentle circles over her back; naked skin which glowed like the moon. I'd seen the moon in digitized images only, but my father once told me that it glowed, and I collected metaphors and similes like candy.

"I want it back, all of it." Her words filled the room like bats. One sudden move and they'd swarm away, looking for a safer home. "I can't bear it, Mulder," her voice broke on a sob.

He said something unintelligible into her cinnamon hair. I hadn't known it, but he'd said it, then, the harsh tear of a 'sc' and the wavy sound of 'ully', a word that now, for the first time, I understood to be a name. "Scully." If his voice was a cello, hers was the viola, and her instrument sprung a string. "Oh, God, I wish I could dream us back."

"I know," he'd say, and I knew he meant it more than anything. "Me, too." He'd bring her up for a tender kiss, smooth a thumb across her cheek, and she'd rest it over his heart. I almost turned and left the first time I found them like this, feeling like an intruder, but then he began to speak again.

"Once upon a time there was a man named Mulder, who was perfectly content holed up in the basement of the F.B.I by himself." (I vowed to look up this acronym later, but my request for information was denied) "One day, a short redhead walked into his life and changed it forever. She was as smart as she was beautiful."

My mother's voice chuffed out a wet laugh. "Don't get all romantic on me, Mulder. Skip to the good part."

And he'd tell her a story. I'd wait outside, slouched against the wall, and listen to him paint pictures of the Past. Things I'd seen only flashes of in dreams became more than smudges of ideas, they became real things, real people; intelligence became more than Assessments, life became less about Completions and more about emotion, impulsiveness, making mistakes and learning from them. Passion became more than sex, more than love, when before I'd counted them as synonyms. Passion was an all-consuming condition that drove you to madness if left unchecked. My parents were passionate about finding answers to impossible questions. My father was good natured, but in these secret nighttime stories he became funny. He made my mother laugh, a delightful sound in the womblike dark. He drew her out from the shadows of fear and solitude and together they jumped into shared memories, golden pools of hope and joy.

I reached our house on U-21st and the corners of my mouth twitched into a smile as I saw them through a gap in the curtain, my father had one arm around my mother and was rocking them side to side. I snuck in the door and listened to my mother giggle. "Mulder, stop it!"

I stepped further into the house and turned to the right, saw him holding my mother at arm's length, and she was spinning. Laughing, her hair fanning out around her. He caught sight of me and pulled her back against his chest, kissed her messy head.

"Hey, who's that beautiful woman standing in the hallway?" he asked, and my mother raised her head, brushing hair away from her face to look at me. Her eyes softened and she smiled, still rocking back and forth in my father's arms.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to imitate their posture.

He smiled. "Ah, the lost art of the slow dance." My mother chuckled in his arms and he kissed the crown of her head. "All we need is some bad music and a disco ball and then I might be able to get to second base later," he joked. I'd seen dancing before, those Tchaikovsky ballets, those wonderful dreams.

"Mulder," my mother warned.

"Second base?" I asked. My mother moved out of his arms and tossed him a sleepy smile. She sat down on the sofa and motioned for me to come sit beside her. There was hesitation in my step. The short-haired version of my mother, her face now appearing gaunt as the vision intensified, haunted me.

"How was the party?" she asked, smoothing her hair into a semblance of order. It hung in waves over one shoulder, the same color as my own. I nodded, trying to smile.

"It was nice. Iris' parents said to tell you 'hello'."

She touched my shoulder, and there was a hint of worry in her eyes. "Are you tired?"

I shook my head. Then my father's voice, "Why don't you get in your pajamas and come back downstairs. We'll make hot chocolate."

As I climbed the stairs a sense of dread slithered up from the arch of my foot to the shell of my ear. The same feeling that had woken me from sleep since I was a very small child. Only recently, over the past few years, had it carried any explanation, or the blurred edge of one. Another vision. I hurried to my room, closed the door and leaned back against it, my heart like thunder in my chest. I shut my eyes against it, but it roared through my head anyway.

Blinks through time, after each short-lived memory a sharp tug into another one, making me nauseous. I saw my mother's life through her eyes, unforgiving to her unwilling observer.

(two hands clasped together, two people running through what I understood to be a field of corn,

a world of white, snow falling thick like wool around me,

my hands stained with dried blood -not my own-, caked and brown under my nails,

the swirl of harsh winter, yet joy filling me up to bursting, my thumbs on someone's windburned cheek. I loved them, powerless against the gauntlet of feeling,

 _Utopia 147_ ,

now warmth, my body pliant with sleep,

a baby wrapping four fingers and a tiny, perfect thumb around my ring finger)

Outside of the vision I inhale sharply. That baby is me.

( _Utopia 147_ ,

"we won't lose it, Scully," he's wrapped around my mother, a palm on the taut skin of her belly)

That baby is not me.

("this place is no Utopia. It's Hell." my mother's voice)

A deep breath as I tried to escape it, overwhelmed, but like always, I had no control.

(panic running in my veins like a high speed train, men in white, the world a blur through tears and pain, the pain isn't physical, it's inside me, loud in my head, a part of my soul tugged away forever, the cry of a baby, and my own scream, a scream that rips me apart)

"It's all right, it's all right," my mother soothed, cradling me, pressing my cheek to her breast as I wept, waking up from it.

"Here's a blanket," he said, covering me, smoothing back sweaty hair from my face. "Shh, calm down."

My mother's lips against my hot forehead, the song from the vision, the vibration of it as she hummed. My green eyes opened to blue. She smiled, trembling slightly. I looked from her to my father. It was the first time I'd seen fear in his eyes. Worry, concern I'd seen. Never fear.

I sat up in her arms, shaking her off, and looked from one parent to the other. Two liars on either side of me. I hated them for the red hair and green eyes that branded me as theirs. I wanted to run, but knew my legs wouldn't hold me up. My silk dress had torn sometime between me closing the door to my bedroom and waking up on the floor of it. For some reason that upset me. The easily replaceable silk, torn like that, was a painful image to my adolescent mind, but paled in comparison to what I'd just borne witness to.

I looked at my mother, coldness in my eyes. "Your name isn't Dana, is it?"

I saw her struggle to come up with a lie. I turned to my father. "Who's Scully?"

"Sylvia, you can't say things like-" my mother was saying. I cut her off.

"You had a baby, another baby, and the Creators took her away before you saw her." I saw the hurt whip through her, and she moved back as if burned.

"Her?" my father asked, his voice cracked on the word.

" _This place is no Utopia. It's Hell_ ," I echoed bravely.

My mother burst into tears and my father stepped over me to get to her.

"No, no, please, God, no," she sobbed.

Utopia 147. A sound like bronze. Like horseshoes on stone, hammer on anvil, thunder in the name.

And this is a story of bronze.


	2. Chapter 1

The city walls changed from night to daylight at six, and I greeted the first morning of January with raw, puffy eyes. The walls of my room were peach colored and warm around me. Usually by now I'd be at the touch-screen desk by my window, sleepily opening the files I'd need that day, reviewing the material, inwardly memorizing for the next month's Assessments. Usually my mother would knock softly on my door and come inside, run her hand over my hair and kiss the crown of my head good morning, her hair wet and smelling of lavender after her shower. Usually my father would come in at seven and tell me to put away my schoolwork, then lead me downstairs for breakfast. Usually.

That morning I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Last night was painful, a smarting wound. I remembered my mother's hasty retreat, my father following her to their room, leaving me on the floor in my ripped dress, tracks of tears sticky on my face.

"You promised me!" my mother had hissed. Then the sound of my father's voice.

"How can we protect her?" my mother sobbed, "She'll be sixteen, and then they'll take her!"

Too tired to listen, too angry to care, I stood and pulled my dress off roughly, throwing it on the ground to wrinkle, pulling my light blue nightgown on over my head, my hairstyle falling apart with the motion. I crawled into my bed to sleep, escaping the headache brought on by the truth. Sometimes, the truth hurts, and I felt it like a pulsing concussion.

* * *

A soft knock at my door, and then it opened to reveal my mother, dressed for the day, my silk dress draped over one arm. She averted her eyes and moved to my desk, setting it on my chair. She smoothed her fingertips over her neat stitches —she'd stayed awake to mend the dress herself instead of using the automated service that repaired everything from ripped paper to minor cuts and burns. All there, a button away. Her work was as neat as the machine's.

"It's almost time for breakfast," she said quietly, her voice scratchy from lack of sleep, or crying. I didn't move, just watched her leave and pull the door closed behind her. Wishing for the first time I didn't have to go to school, I roused myself and dressed in the uniform I'd worn since the age of five; a white shirt with U-147 embroidered on the breast pocket tucked into a dark blue skirt. I pulled on the navy socks and slipped on my grey shoes. Most days I fidgeted with my hair in the morning, more often than not braiding it back, or asking my mother to. Today I had no desire to see myself in the mirror. I bunched my hair together and secured it with an elastic, the sloppiness a sharp contrast to the elegance of the night before.

I felt my father's eyes on me as I came into the kitchen. A bowl of oatmeal was waiting for me at the table like always. All of my friends ordered from the Menu, their food arriving seconds later, plates with fragrant French toast, waffles, sugary cereals, eggs and bacon. My mother didn't let us eat food from the Menu —it was 'fake', she said with distaste. She didn't want to be controlled by a machine. My mother cooked, and that was that. The times I'd stayed at friends' houses we'd ordered waffles in the morning, ice cream on top.

That morning I eyed the oatmeal with annoyance, hating the carefully washed and cut apples and strawberries she'd put on the side, the hot chocolate my father had prepared like every other morning. He sat at the table, waiting, while my mother leaned on the kitchen counter, seeming to exclude herself. I moved past her and went to the Menu on the wall, punching in my code. The wall tablet lit up.

"What can I serve you this morning?" the robotic voice chirped.

My father set down his cup. "Sylvia, come eat your oatmeal. You know our rules." I ignored him and ordered a waffle. It arrived seconds later on the kitchen counter, smelling delicious, with a pad of butter melting on top and a small single-serving of syrup on the plate next to it. I took my breakfast and went to the table, sitting across from my father and stubbornly refusing to look at him as I viciously cut into the meal I wasn't even hungry for. Awkward vestiges of last night's events hung in the morning air, thick like oil.

My mother came to sit as well, my untouched bowl of oatmeal between us all like a witness. She was dressed for work, the dark blue of her Health Center uniform —U-147 printed on the breast pocket. Her hair was pulled back in a simple twisted chignon, perfect without a mirror. Her white coat designating her as a Healer hung in the hall next to my blue school jacket and my father's dark grey one, the color worn by academics who worked at the Research Center. As a Healer, my mother had what was considered one of the most highly honored occupations, but I saw her walking up to the house after work while I did my revisions. She looked weary and unhappy. I had thought it was maybe an act, the smile she put on when she saw me walking down the stairs to greet her, the strength of her hug, the ritual of sitting down on the sofa together while she listened to me recount what I'd done that day, but now I knew what it meant to her. How her daughter lit up her life. I just didn't understand it, not then, the fierceness with which a mother could love her child.

"I'll pick you up from Independent Study this afternoon," my father said. I rolled my eyes, feigning indifference. In truth I was nervous. Independent Study ended at four, two hours before he normally came home from work. Realistically I knew that we couldn't let the events of last night slip away into nothingness, but some part of me thought I could somehow escape a debriefing. I nodded, then darted a look at my mother.

"What about you,  _Scully_?" I asked.

I don't know what I expected then. Backlash, chastisement perhaps, anything but the gentle look between my parents, then her calm voice.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," she said, then took the bowl of oatmeal, stood up, and went to the trash can. My father looked at his watch and stood, put his mug in the sink beside my empty bowl. I threw away my mangled waffle, embarrassed.

In the entryway I moved away from them as quickly as possible, picking up the school bag from the bottom of the staircase where I'd carelessly tossed it on my way down. I rushed out the door and was halfway to the sidewalk when I heard my mother calling after me. She wordlessly handed me my jacket. When I took it from her she took my hand quickly, squeezed.

A wrench into memory.

(i crouch down and hold my arms out to the little girl rushing toward me, clutching a rolled Certificate of Completion in her chubby hand,

"Mama!" my four-year old voice calls, and in my mother's body i feel her heart swell with love)

I stepped back from my mother, surprised. It wasn't often that she showed memories from her own Past. She looked at me, uncertain of my reaction. I moved forward then and pulled her in for a quick embrace, all anger gone.

"I love you, Mom," I whispered. She nodded as we parted.

* * *

It had happened for as long as I could remember. The dreams. The visions. When I was little they were pleasant things -running through a field of poppies, jumping off a dock and into a lake in summer, stroking the smooth flank of a dappled pony, falling asleep on a warm day outside, lavender in the air. My mind showed me things that were unfamiliar but not frightening. It was before I knew I could show my mother what I'd seen, around the age of three. But I think she knew, even before.

I remember being four years old and waking up from a strange dream in the middle of the night. It hadn't scared me, but I was puzzled, and I wanted answers. I scooted out of my little bed and stumbled toward my parents' room, moving silently in my footed pajamas. The soft shape they made together, him curled around her. I stood as tall as I could and tapped my father's arm, wrapped around my mother. He made a sound, like clearing his throat, and my mother opened her eyes sleepily, took me in standing there, my hair mussed around my face.

"Hi, honey," she said, sitting up. My father rubbed his eyes, waking up. He turned the light on beside the bed. "Did you have another dream?"

I nodded, and she reached down to pick me up. I draped myself over her. She smoothed hair away from my face. I hummed something and focused on her hand smoothing circles on my back.

I showed her what I'd seen.

(a man's hands moving over the black and white keys, the steady counter-rhythm he kept with one foot on the damper pedal, an inexplicable emotion, a mixture of peace and anticipation)

My father was looking at her, waiting for a response. I was sleepy, and melted into the small space between them, beyond a need for an answer, but comforted that I could share the dream with her. She showed me the sign, both hands moving palms down to the left, then to the right. I copied her clumsily.

"Good girl," she said. I curled against her. My father leaned to turn off the light. We slept.

* * *

My family used a secret language. Later I would learn that it belonged to many others, it wasn't just something my mother had invented to bring some sense to those dreams. She showed me a memory when I was old enough to understand.

(stamping on the floor of a kitchen, a loud sound, and a child, freckled and redheaded like us, turns around,  _what?_ , my mother's light voice speaks as her hands move, a young girl's hands, " _you forgot to wash your hands_ ". the little boy sticks out his tongue,  _i don't care!_ )

I opened my eyes and looked at my mother, puzzled. She held my hand again.

(a gathering of children, outside, "i'm not taking charles on my team," a teenage boy says, my young mother is frustrated, she puts her hands on her hips, "he's deaf, bill, not blind!" the same young boy from before, slightly older, runs up to join the other children. i sense their discomfort, my mother sighs, " _charlie, can you catch a football?_ " she asks, and charlie nods,  _better than you, Dictionary!_  my mother grins, " _never"_ )

I smile when she lets go of my hand. "Dictionary?"

She nodded, spelling D-A-N-A. She then held a D, signed the word for 'dictionary', and pointed at herself. She then signed C-H-A-R-L-I-E, held a C, then signed 'silly'. N-A-M-E S-I-G-N.

My father learned along with me, and soon we could have short conversations using only our hands. I didn't understand the need for it, not when I was little, but as I grew older I began to grasp the necessity. The words I learned in my dreams couldn't be said aloud, even if I heard them in my mind. Another rule my mother made was that our secret language could only be used at home, just between the three of us. It was invaluable to explaining things to me, and I don't know how I could have made sense of the world without it.

* * *

I was eight, another dream. I woke up covered in sweat, and I'd wet the bed. I stood on shaky legs, tears sticky on my face, and moved blindly through the room, crying, breathing too quickly for my sobs to be heard. My parents weren't in their room, but I heard soft talking from downstairs. My fear was all-consuming. I stumbled downstairs, tripping down the last two, then saw my mother sitting on the couch. Her expression changed when she saw me rushing toward her. My father had gotten to his feet at the sound of my fall, but I had eyes only for her. I crashed into her and pushed the dream into her body.

(skeletons, their clothing blue and white vertical stripes, cold, so cold, feet numb -we stood in mud and snow, brusque shouting, the hollowness of hunger, the exhaustion, fear like a bath in ice water we couldn't escape, and as we looked up at the bleak sky the sight of dark snow the shape of wood shavings, a nauseating smell)

My mother pushed me away from her and ran to the kitchen, then vomited into the sink. Once, twice, her eyes streaming. She looked at me in horror. My face was now buried into my father's chest, and I was crying. She shook her head.

"Stop it!" she cried. "You have to stop it!"

I cried harder, and my father's hands tightened around me.

"Dana, you're scaring her," he said, then kissed the crown of my head.

She signed something, going slower for him, although her hands trembled. I saw the word, but it held no meaning for me.

H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T

It took him a moment, but then he gasped, looking down at me, his hold on me loosened. Their reactions terrified me, and I started sobbing, they were on top of each other, I couldn't breathe.

My mother rushed forward and pulled me sharply toward her. I closed my eyes.

(a warm day, the trickle of a creek nearby, we were lying belly down on soft green grass, our hair blowing in a gentle breeze, a doe and her fawn grazed across the field)

I shook my head, and she squeezed me again.

(cupped in our palms a small sleeping kitten, she wakes up and struggles free, jumping to our lap and kneading curiously, we smooth a palm across her striped back, she ignores us, then turns and butts her little head against our hand, her nose warm and soft)

I nodded, my eyes opening wearily.

"It was the Past, honey," my mother said, "It's over, now. It can't hurt you. You're safe." My father stroked my back, over my damp nightgown.

I shook my head. "I don't understand -" I was hiccuping now.

My father turned me around, although I kept a hand on my mother's shirt.

"You're safe," he said, his voice warm, a calmness there that I needed desperately. "Come on, let's find some new pajamas. I'll tell you a story."

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" I asked as he picked me up, wrapping my legs around him.

"Of course," he said, and I snuggled my face into his throat. As we walked to the stairs I saw my mother wipe her eyes, leaning against the armchair for support, as exhausted as I was. "How about two stories?"

I nodded quietly. "Is Mama coming, too?" We were at the top of the stairs and I couldn't see her anymore.

"Of course she is," my father said, setting me down in my room. "She's going to get in her pajamas, too, and then we'll all be ready."

I looked at him. "You, too?"

He looked down at himself, still in his work clothes as he looked for a new nightgown. "I thought I'd just sleep in this." His deadpan voice made me giggle.

"That's silly, Daddy," I smiled.

"What? You don't sleep in your school clothes sometimes?"

I shook my head and giggled. "No!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Then I'd say you're pretty silly, too. It's great!"

He set the new nightgown and underwear next to me on the floor and went to change the sheets as I got dressed. I heard my mother come up the stairs, her steps slow and measured. As my head came through the top of the nightgown I saw her wipe another hand over her eyes, and the familiar guilt crept up my spine. I couldn't stop the dreams from coming, but I couldn't bear to see her suffering just as much as I was, every single time. I began to keep some dreams from her, and in this way I was just like the Creators, keeping secrets to protect their people. Ignorance was familiar as air, and now I knew it was possible to know too much. At least if you were ignorant, you could do what you wanted, you had no idea what had been achieved in the Past. You were free.

I tried to keep the visions from her, telling myself they weren't really so hard to handle on my own. I watched a great ship sink from the safety of a lifeboat as thousands of souls cried for help in a cold ocean, a child begging for water when I had none to give her. I was burned at the stake, the flames licking up my legs, the smell of my roasting flesh as men who thought they were right looked on, proud of their actions, scorching evil. I was a Bolshevik, firing bullets at innocent girls, dropping them to the ground like doves shot for the table.

At the breakfast table my parents would ask me how I'd slept, if I'd had any dreams, and I'd tell them No; no dreams, no nightmares. Even lies could be true, if you knew how to listen.

As I grew older the visions didn't contain themselves to dreams, but I was good at concealing them when they struck unexpectedly. One day, Year Twelve, I was stopped mid-step on my way home from the library by the sudden onset of being pulled into the Past. Powerless against it, I quickly bent to tie my shoe, and closed my eyes.

(brightness beneath me, its surface craggy unfamiliar, darkness all around, my body felt strange, and i wondered if perhaps i was underwater. a bounce as my feet connected with the grey-white ground, my entire being filled with disbelief, with wonder, traces of fear that i couldn't understand, tears of joy begging to escape)

I stood up from my shoe, seeing a man walk from the sidewalk up to the front door of his house and punch his code into the electronic pad by the door. He hadn't noticed me. I wiped a tear from my eye before it could fall and hurried home, feeling weak but overjoyed. I burst into the house and looked for my mother, although it was too early for her to be home. I saw my father in the kitchen getting a snack and went to him, wordlessly taking his hand and closing my eyes. I opened them, remembering, frustrated, not for the first time, that I couldn't share the vision with him.

"What did you see?" he asked curiously, taking in the strange expression on my face.

I smiled and recounted the vision in as much detail as I could, seeing his expression change from curiosity to wonder. I nodded enthusiastically.

"It was like something incredible had happened for the first time, Dad."

The sound of the door opening drew me out of my thoughts. My mother walked in, and once again I saw her carefully contained weariness blossom into happiness at the sight of us.

She looked puzzled. "What's wrong?"

My father was almost speechless. He cleared his throat and tapped my arm. "Show her."

I went to her, and after she hung her Healer coat in the hall I took her hand, showed her the memory. When I let go, she was staring at my father, open-mouthed.

"What was it?" I asked them, turning to my father as he began to sign.

M-O-O-N L-A-N-D-I-N-G

I raised an eyebrow. M-O-O-N?

My mother explained, a quick sequence of signs. Later I would see the images, my father would tell me it glowed. I wished I could see it, but the Creators had taken that away, too. Day and night were programmed events and began at the same time every day. No wishing on stars, no enchantment brought by a full moon.

* * *

I had been in my head all day, barely listening to the morning announcements at school, passively looking at my grades from the last week (18/20, 17/20, 20/20), not hearing Julia's kind congratulations from beside me. Instructors weren't used to me being quiet, and after Mathematics the Instructor took me aside to ask if I was all right, and that I could go to the Infirmary if I was feeling ill. I don't know what I felt. Betrayed, I suppose. I had always known I was different, yet I had followed every rule, passed every Assessment with high marks, shone in all my Completions. The Past invading my mind was like a head cold, only I couldn't just ask my mother for medication, I had to live with it day and night. I thought I had mastered it. The visions had been getting easier to handle. But last night…

I distracted myself by playing music in my head. Occasionally, on the nights where I didn't want to sleep, my mother had given me a piece of music, no memory attached, right into my brain, memorized forever. Schubert's  _Ständchen_ , its rises and falls. Chopin's  _Nocturnes_ , night music steeped with melancholy. She gave me a Brahms once, and it played like thinking. Slow, hovering, considering, then moving ahead, only to turn back and repeat itself. I played these in my head, and then the song she'd sung when I was a baby, the song she'd gotten in trouble for. She gave it to me the night I dreamt of the concentration camps, but I don't know if she'd meant to. Cuddled against my father in bed, her hand rested on my back unconsciously.

(looking over at a young woman from the passenger seat as she drives, windows half down, fiery hair whipping in the wind, a free spirit, full of life, she looks over at us and smiles as she sings unselfconsciously along to the tape,

_talk to me of mendocino_

_closing my eyes i hear the sea_

_must i wait, must i follow_

_won't you say come with me_

her voice isn't perfect, but it's full of happiness... _melissa_ )

I woke up in the bed and turned over to see my mother. She was looking at the ceiling, her eyes were wet, they sparkled in the dark. I sleepily patted her hand.

"It's okay, Mama."

She looked down at me and smiled, tucked hair behind my ear. "Is it?"

I nodded knowingly, then lay my head back down to sleep. She pulled my little body close to hers and wrapped her arm around me. There, in the darkness, she held me and showed me the memory again, played the whole song.

Sitting in Independent Study, ignoring my schoolwork and waiting for my father, I remembered that song. I was unable to sing, but I knew the lyrics;

_oh, the trees grow high in new york state_

_they shine like gold in autumn_

_never had the blues whence i came,_

_but in new york state i caught 'em_

I said the lines in a whisper, head down, to my own chest.  _Autumn. Caught 'em_. How the rhyme snuggled into its partner.

"Sylvia, it's your Dad," Julia said, nudging me. I looked up and saw him standing at the door to the study hall. He lifted his hand in greeting, and I nodded, worry scaling up my vertebrae with its pickaxe. I picked up my school bag, said goodbye to Julia, and went to meet him.

The walk back to U-21st was awkward, conversation limited to recounting my day at school, most of which I couldn't remember. He was persistent, trying to melt my suit of armor.

"Come on, tell me your grades from last week," he said, "that quiz you were worried about in Math?"

"Eighteen over twenty," I murmured, not caring.

"Ha! You owe me 10u. You said you'd get a seventeen," he smiled.

I looked up. "I said seventeen point five."

He wagged a finger. "You said seventeen."

"Fine," I said. I thought of that morning, of how quickly I'd run off to school to get away from them. The tension during breakfast. We walked in silence for a time. He'd taken off his jacket and rolled up his white shirtsleeves, altering his normally long stride to match my reluctant one. I remembered how easily he had skated across that ice yesterday. Year Sixteen, I'd almost forgotten.

"Don't worry," he said, "we just want to talk to you."

I took this in, then slipped off my own school jacket and carried it under one arm. "So, you're not mad at me?" I asked the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shake his head. "No, we're not mad at you."

"She's mad at me," I insisted, "I saw how she looked at me when I mentioned that baby."

He shook his head again. "She's not mad at you, not at all," he reassured. "She was upset, but not because of you."

I was immediately relieved, but I couldn't let the subject go unanswered. "I was right, then. She did have another baby."

Our house was coming up on the right, and my father cleared his throat. "Let's talk about this later."

My father helped me with my homework once I brought down the portable tablet from my bedroom. We ate clementines. I asked about his work and, as usual, his answers left much to be desired. I would know soon, at the end of January when I became a Protector. Soon my mother's footsteps sounded outside and, after hearing the code beeped in, she walked in the door, her face brightening at the sight of us sitting together at the table.

"Hi," she said. She was nervous, although she concealed it well. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," my father said, and I nodded, hoping she saw the peace in my eyes. She hung up her coat and took off her shoes, then came to the table. Like every day, she smoothed a hand over my head in greeting, today my messy hair, then went to the other side of the table to kiss my father.

"I think we're ready to talk," my father said tentatively.

"Oh." Her voice was like the feeling I'd felt that morning, the inevitability of a difficult conversation tinged with hope that it would maybe be swept under the rug. But there was no rug in sight. Here we were. She took a deep breath, then sat down next to my father, looking uncomfortable.

"Sylvia," my father began, "I think you've known for awhile that these dreams you have, the things you see...other people can't see them."

I nodded. I used to wonder if my friends had them, too, and if they, like me, were keeping a secret. But they couldn't be as carefree as they were, as innocent. I'd seen things, I knew that there was no single side to a coin. "I see the Past."

He bit his lip. "Yes, but you see it in a certain way. You know a few years ago, when you told me about the moon landing?" I nodded again. "Well, that exact memory was only experienced by a single person. No one, not even in the Past, could have that memory except for the man who experienced it. And do you remember the coronation, in the cathedral?" I remembered it well, a exhilarating dream. "It wasn't you being crowned. It was a king in the Past."

There was a pause of charged silence. "Do you understand?" my mother asked gently.

I looked at them. "So they're someone else's memories? A specific person?"

They nodded. "We think so," my father continued. "You see the Past, but not your past, you see it through the eyes of the whole world. Through the eyes of a king, or through a prisoner's in a concentration camp."

"I've seen other things," I said, feeling a great release surging up within me. "One time I was tied up and thrown into a well. I jumped off a building once, so high I couldn't see the street. It was like flying, but I was terrified. One time I was holding a gun, I shot a little girl. She was screaming, and I shot her." My father's eyes were wide, and my mother was holding her own hand down to the table. It was a reflex of hers to soothe me after a frightening dream, giving me a happy image, and over the years I'd internalized so much of the pain that no kitten, no sunny day could take it away. She wanted to reach out and give me a memory.

"Why didn't you let us know?" she asked, her voice conveyed the misery of a parent who couldn't comfort their child.

"Nobody can know everything about someone," I said, wishing it weren't quite so true.

My father cleared his throat, bringing us back to the topic. "Sylvia, in a month you'll graduate, you'll be selected as a Protector."

Despite everything, a sense of pride swelled inside me.

"When the ceremony is over, they're going to show you some of the Past. But what they'll show you...it won't be real."

I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean? How can a memory not be real?"

He was glad I had asked the question. "Memories aren't always honest. We can make them prettier in our heads, especially if we've done something wrong. We can make whatever we've done seem less significant. Like when you scrape your knee falling down, but once the scab heals you can barely remember the instant of pain."

I nodded, following his train of thought. My mother had her eyes on my father, a quiet admiration.

"But what you see, Sylvia...you see undiluted memories. The exact instant something occurred, the emotion behind it. There's no bias in your visions. There isn't time to make the memory prettier, or less true."

I looked at my mother, who nodded at me.  _It's true_ , her eyes said.

"You'll see things after the ceremony that you've seen before. But those events have been altered significantly. To highlight the wrong in them. What's wrong in those memories is subjective. When you've had your dreams about the Holocaust, what was wrong?"

I couldn't put it into words, the amount of things that were wrong. I looked to my mother for help. "Everything! All of it. There was shouting, and I knew that whoever was shouting was saying things that made me scared. The people around me, the prisoners, I was one of them. We hadn't done anything wrong."

"And when you shot the little girl?" my mother asked.

My eyes widened. "I wanted her dead. I was thrilled to kill her." I panicked. "But I know it's wrong! I would never hurt a child! You have to believe me!"

She smiled reassuringly. "We know, we know. Of course not. But the point is, you've been the good guys and the bad guys, and in both memories what you were feeling was the truth,  _their_  truth. Not yours."

"So the Past they'll show us after the ceremony, it'll be made of memories of things they  _want_  me to see."

My father nodded. "Exaggerated versions of horrible events in the Past, but no good ones. Instead of music there'll be screaming, instead of swimming they'll show drowning, instead of a holiday they'll show a war."

"Why?"

"To make you believe that Utopia is the only solution, the logical one. Your friends, kids who haven't seen the things you've seen, they'll believe what they see. Once they see the Creators's version of the Past, they'll be completely won over," my father said, his tone bordering on cold anger. My mother put a hand on his arm to calm him.

I was puzzled. "But isn't Utopia better? No war, no drowning, no hunger, no senseless killing."

"How do we know that war is a bad thing?" my mother asked.

I shrugged. "Because...people die?"

She nodded. "Because we learn from the Past. War probably seemed like a good idea the first time people charged into it, but in the end they learned that decimating the enemy is a dirtier job than it looks. And that it's not always worth it."

I looked at them both. We had reached level ground. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you need to know your own Past. Our Past," my father said. "Once the Creators find out you know the truth, you'll be in danger. So we need to prepare you."

"I already know some of my Past, I think," I offered, bothered by his last statement but planning on coming back to it.

"Before Utopia," my mother clarified. "Sylvia, you were born before Utopia."

"I know," I said, unfazed. "I remember the day I was born. I've seen it a couple times."

She blinked, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "What?"

"It wasn't very clear, Mom. I remember being on your chest and crying. It was dark around us, and I was cold, but you were warm." I looked at my father. "You were there, too, Dad. You had a beard, though."

They looked like two children caught in a game of hide and seek. Found out.

"But -how did you know?" my mother sputtered.

"Because I never see memories of Utopia, not unless you show me one, Mom. I only see the Past."

My father chuckled. "Well, I guess that's one big hurdle out of the way, then."

My mother batted his arm. "Mulder, come on, be serious."

"Sorry," he apologized, smirking.

"So," my mother continued, "I'm going to show you our Past. Not all of it," she reassured, "just what you need to know."

"So, what I saw last night, those things were real? It was your Past?" I clarified.

She nodded. Suddenly I narrowed my eyes. "But what about what you said before...about people making their memories prettier, subjective. Won't yours be the same way?"

She shrugged. "Probably, but not in the same way the Creators will try to use them as a manipulation tactic. We just want you to know our version of how things happened, and why. We want to help you understand, and to show you, even if it hurts sometimes."

"You'll find out how your batshit crazy your mom thought I was back in the day," my father said, making her chuff out a laugh.

"And how right you ended up being," my mother said gently, putting her hand on his on the table.

"Mom, don't show me you and Dad, you know…"

She choked on air. " _Sylvia_!"

"Yeah, keep it PG,  _Mom_ ," my father joked.

Flustered, she stood and went to the kitchen, calling out to ask if we wanted water. I shared an amused look with my father and we declined. The mood had lightened over the past hour, and was now clear with the electric pull of hope. I was going to get to see their Past, and learn from it. For once I felt genuinely grateful for my ability to see things others couldn't. In our small and simple dining room my world had changed profoundly with nothing more than words.

It felt like the dream I'd had once, looking into a pool in the shade of a Joshua tree. Stained dark, leaves scattered over the surface and dotting the none-too-clean bottom. The water still and silent. Even in its filthiness there was something forbidden and mysterious about that pool. My mother's memories were those littered leaves, some pressed stubbornly against the walls of the pool. It didn't look pleasant, but I still wanted to jump in just to make the water move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback welcomed and appreciated!


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